Study day on Philo Alexandrinus

On the 23rd of June 2026, CJHNTdigital team members and external guests met for a study day with the title „Philo and his writings“. Philo is one of the substantial authors of the STJ period, and his ideas come up frequently in our entries. Nevertheless, because of the complicated language and the substantial length of his Opus, his potential often remains undiscovered.

We started the day with a neat get together with café & croissants and eventually got into the three topic-focused panels: First, Philo as a human; second, Philo as a philosopher, and third, Philo as a Jew and an interpreter of the Hebrew Bible. Each of the blocks included at least one input and a common lecture with a discussion. The closing discussion summed up the various gripping ideas that had come up in the inputs and set new impulses for future cooperations and research questions.

We will certainly continue in the tradition of our study days, focusing at a part of our corpus, or to answer a certain study question. The (relatively) informal atmosphere creates a great opportunity to exchange experience, find new cooperations, and create a network of young scientists across the German-speaking world. Another workshop is already in the planning, we would like to organize a writing session in the first half of 2027, stay tuned!